Junior Research Symposia

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    The Meme Culture And Its Influence On Sri Lankan English Morphology
    (Proceedings of the Undergraduate Research Symposium (HUG 2018), Department of English Language Teaching, Faculty of Humanities, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2018) Abeythunga, M.; Jayasinghe, N.; Almeida, S.
    This research study demonstrates the influence of “internet memes” on the morphology of language and language usage among the Sri Lankan youth. With the rapidly growing trend of Internet and social media, popular social media content in both Sinhala and English leads to mixed language usage among speakers of both languages. The research study focuses on how the “meme culture” continuously influences morphology through the widespread social media usage among the youth in the country. The research study was conducted based on memes and social media posts that are currently trending in Sri Lanka, and was not limited to content of Sri Lankan origin. A sample group of 50 students (aged 18 to 24 years) were given a questionnaire which tested their knowledge of popular meme references. Thereafter, speech samples and written content (obtained with the prior permission was of the subjects) were collected over a period of two weeks. The model of morphological analysis adopted in this study is based on Seneratne’s analysis on the morphology of Sinhalese and English code-mixing. This study shows that Sri Lankan youth are aware of popular meme trends and social media content which they refer in everyday conversation among peers. This confirms that these have a significant influence on the speech and vocabulary of Sinhala and English speaking youth. The contribution of the “meme culture” to the development of Sri Lankan English morphology in the current era can also be gauged through this research
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    Reflective Teaching: Exploring The Influence Of The Curriculum On Language Acquisition
    (Proceedings of the Undergraduate Research Symposium (HUG 2019), Department of English Language Teaching, Faculty of Humanities, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2019) Almeida, S.; Abeythunga, M.
    Curriculum design has a direct impact on the process of teaching and learning. In Sri Lankan education structure, English is included as a compulsory subject through educational reforms, yet it is visible that fluency and proficiency are limited despite the heavy curriculum. The possibility of completing specific language skills within the predicted time is questionable since the learner's needs and the proficiency level is different from one learner to another. Reflective teaching which facilitates the teacher to perceive the leaner‟s proficiency level and explore the different teaching strategies can be suggested as a solution for problems in the classroom (Disu, 2017). However, the problem of the efficiency of the curriculum in language acquisition prevails. This study explores the influence of the curriculum on language acquisition of English as a Second Language, among Learners according to teachers' perception. This study demonstrates how curriculum design has affected language acquisition related to different language skills and functions. To achieve the objectives of this study, 30 reflective summaries from 10 undergraduates from the University of Kelaniya who completed the Internship in Teaching English as a Second Language degree program were collected and a questionnaire was administered to gather information about the alternative methods in which the student teachers used to acquire language during their secondary education period. The collected data were analyzed through mixed methods approach. The findings of the study outlined the amount of influence the curriculum has on English language teaching and learning and the importance of identifying learner needs and the proficiency level before applying any teaching methods. Furthermore, this study attempts providing an analysis of the influence of the curriculum on English Language Teaching (ELT) and the different teaching strategies the teachers could use in a language classroom (Piaget, 1958 & Vygotsky, 1978).